Many books have been written about the rise and fall of the car maker DeLorean but plans have been revealed for a new and definitive take on the chequered history of the firm.

Two members of the UK DeLorean Owners’ Club - Chris Parnham and And Withers - have joined forces with former DeLorean director Barrie Wills to combine a large collection of photography with Mr Wills’s recollections in a new book.

‘DeLorean - celebrating the impossible’ will be a hardback coffee table book celebrating the DMC-12 sports car made famous by the Back To The Future movies - and the people and events that made it happen in Northern Ireland.

The inspiration for the book is an extensive photographic collection by Belfast photographer Esler Crawford, who was hired by the Dunmurry company to record its development from the groundbreaking ceremony in 1978, through the assembly plant construction, the development of the car by Lotus, its launch into production and sale into the US market, up to it going into receivership in 1982.

The book will also feature hundreds of other photographs never seen in public before, some of which were donated by the car’s designer Giorgetto Giugiaro and former employees of IAD who undertook interior design work.

Others have come from Legend Industries, the Motor Industry Research Association, former employees, suppliers and current owners.

The book, which it is hoped will be published in October next year, will also include Mr Wills’s view of the firm from the inside, written largely in anecdotal form and complemented by reminiscences of DeLorean employees and others.

Explaining how he got involved Mr Wills, who lives in Millison’s Wood, near Meriden, said he had initially met with Mr Parnham and Mr Withers to help identify people in the pictures but they ended up asking him to share his reminiscences in the book.

“Eight months and 100,000 words later, I finished writing,” he said. “I realised there were many memorable and amusing stories to be recorded. There were myths and downright lies to correct and in the odd case, scores to be settled.”

He added: “About 2,500 people in Belfast, Turin, Coventry, Norfolk and Worthing worked their socks off to perform a modern miracle that turned out to be the impossible.

“I felt that I owed it to them to explain some of the detail of what brought about the car that they - and the 6,500 owners worldwide, never mind the fans of the Back To The Future film trilogy - love.”